Lesbian Parenting was a whole new frontier for me, and so when I first heard the term ‘blended family’ I pictured my wife, kids, and self as pieces of fruit inside a blender… yummm.
If you look up the term ‘Blended Family’ on Wikipedia you will see that the page you are taken to is titled ‘Step Family’. The definition given for a stepfamily is "the family one acquires when a parent enters a new marriage, whether the parent was widowed or divorced".
There are a number of issues that my wife and I had to face when we became a blended family such as issues of who would discipline the children, what role religious beliefs play, etc. etc. Even today we are scheduled to meet with our son’s principal at school. I have deep seated issues with being sent to the principal’s office and my wife is a much better candidate for handling this situation. She drives them to school and picks them up, and is the one who talks to all of the teachers and things. The extent of my involvement with the kids schooling is for me to wave goodbye when they leave, say hello when they get home, help with homework and wave at them during the Halloween Parade each year. But when it comes down to it they want to talk only to me. There is no space on the children’s registration paperwork for same-sex parents or step-parents, so basically Gina is not listed as anything except someone who can pick the children up in an emergency. So as you can see the life of a blended lesbian family is fun times and always keeps us on our toes.
In the five years that our blended family has been together we have each gained an extended family as well.
Gina has a large family with many aunts and cousins and friends turned family. My immediate family is pretty small and I am the only one in my family to have children, so the kids didn’t have any cousins from my side. Now they have at least 20! It was kind of confusing at first to get all of the names down and figure out who’s who and how they are all connected, but now I’m getting pretty good at remembering names at family functions and they are starting to remember mine too. The older generation family sometimes thinks we are just friends but my grandmother is completely aware of the fact that we are a lesbian family and she loves Gina (I think even more than me!) Having extended our family has been an interesting experience and makes me feel very blessed to have so many people that love us.
We’ve come along way from the broken little family of three that we were before Gina and I made it a mended little family of four.
Now I picture us more like a patchwork quilt that is all warm and cozy. We’ve settled into Lesbian Parenting quite nicely and we always manage to come out on top. There are a lot of resources available nowadays for blended gay and lesbian families to take advantage of, especially online.
Some websites you can visit to learn more about the subject are:
Blended Families.com
About.com Lesbian Home and Family Life
eHow Article: How to Blend Families
eHow Article: How to Be a Step Parent in A Same Sex Relationship
Plus you can always find other lesbian moms to connect with on social sites such as:
Proud Parenting
Olivia
GLEE
Lesbian Moms MeetUp
L-Moms2 on Yahoo!
Maybe I will see you on a message board somewhere, LOL. In the meantime, stay well and thank you for reading about my blended, extended, and mended little family. Until next time have a good one!
About the Author: Julie Phineas is a work at home mom of 2 who lives in Southern California. You can find out more and view her photos by visiting her page on MySpace.